


Life Obliges

by thecoldlightofday



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:45:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoldlightofday/pseuds/thecoldlightofday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An anon asked for “an AU where Lori dies giving birth to Carl instead of Judith and Shane helps Rick take care of the baby until he and Rick fall in love”</p><p>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress. Expect a few more (or many more, I'm not sure) parts to come.

Shane got to the hospital late.

He’d left as soon as Rick had called him—five thirty in the morning in the very peak of summer, right as the sun started warming the navy sky to gray. Shane had grabbed his phone off the nightstand only half awake, tangled up inside his sheet.

“Baby time,” was all Rick said, the words coming out in a rush. He could hear Lori saying something in the background. There was awe and excitement in Rick’s voice, panic too, hesitation, and Shane was flattered because he knew he was the first person Rick had called with the news.

“See you at the hospital,” he got out before the line went dead.

He stopped to buy presents along the way. The florist’s was one of the only places open, bouquet displays in the windows pretty and bright. There was a whole world of colors inside, more types of flowers than he’d seen in his life and the smell of the place was overpowering. He walked the store twice before he settled on something he thought Lori might like—long stemmed, violet flowers with butter yellow roses stuffed in-between. He’d wanted to get something for Rick too, cigars or whatever the tradition was supposed to be, but most of the stores didn’t open until eight. He figured he’d make a run out for cigars once the baby was born, not that Rick would even smoke them, but still. He wanted to do something to mark the moment, this crazy day where his best friend was going to be a _dad_. Something he’d never really pictured either of them as. Far as Shane was concerned, down where it mattered, he and Rick were still just two ten year olds playing at being big.

Rick was in the maternity waiting room when Shane came jogging down the hall. The sight of Rick there, arms dangling at his sides listless, gripped his stomach cold. It felt like the winter the creek had only half frozen over and he’d only gone a few steps across the ice before it shattered and he’d fallen in. The feeling was the same, jagged, like he was made of ice instead of bone.

“Emergency C-section,” Rick told him, hands finding Shane as if he were a lifeline, lips pale and thin. “They said I had to wait out here.”

Shane put a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright,” he promised, squeezing. “Probably just the cord or something, no big deal. I was a C-section too.”

Rick nodded, corpse-gray and quiet and unconvinced. He let Shane guide him, too lost in worry for real conversation, and they sat in the orange plastic chairs without a word. The sun stretched through the windows and it fell in elongated blocks on the linoleum floor, casting shadows across his boots.

A doctor came to talk to Rick after ten minutes. His expression was carefully cautious, too tight for Shane to read.

“It’s a boy,” the doctor said, and started grinning. “He’s doing fine. He’s just having a routine checkup if you want to see him. One of the nurses can take you.”

Shane couldn’t stop smiling. Rick had a _boy_. It was what he’d been hoping for a boy, someone he could pass what he knew onto—that he’d teach to catch a ball and ride a bike. A little boy that would look like the Rick he remembered from his childhood, blue eyed and missing a front tooth.

“My wife?” Rick asked weakly, too stunned for real joy.

The doctor’s grin faded. What he said next sounded rehearsed, mechanical, like how the academy had trained him and Rick to deal with hysterical family members when they were out on patrol.

“There’s some bleeding we’re trying to get under control. She had a class 2 placental abruption and she’s having some trouble clotting. We’ll know more once the procoagulants we’ve given her have had time to kick in.”

Shane had no idea what the doctor was talking about, just that it wasn’t good. He knew from the way Rick started to fold in on himself and took three shaky steps back. Shane put a hand on Rick’s back to steady him and felt him shudder through a breath. It scared Shane to see Rick like this, so helpless. He thought Rick would have a million questions for the doctor, but Rick hung on every word and let them fester, turn to wounds inside himself. Rick was blaming himself, sure as anything, same as he’d blamed himself with Lori had first gotten pregnant, as if the faulty condom had had nothing to do with it at all.

“Hey,” Shane said. He wrapped his arm around Rick’s shoulders and tugged him close. “You can’t think about that stuff right now. The doctors, man, they know what they’re doing. You just gotta wait.”

A nurse, pretty thing, slim and just under thirty, dark hair pinned up in a bun, approached them and gently touched Rick on the arm. “Do you want to see your baby?”

“No.” Rick shook his head. He looked torn, crippled and broken down like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. “I have—I have to wait for Lori. I can’t see him before Lori.”

“I’ll go,” Shane said, sliding his hand from Rick’s shoulder to his neck. “I’ll keep an eye on him, okay? You stay here, brother.”

The nurse turned to him. There was sympathy in her eyes. She’d clearly already been told about the situation. He felt like it was worse than either he or Rick really knew.

“Are you family?” She asked him, eyes flicking from Shane to Rick.

“I’m his brother,” he answered before Rick had a chance. He doubted Rick could string a sentence together, let alone a lie.

“Follow me.”

She led him through a set of doors that locked behind them and down a corridor to a room at the end of a hall. He could hear a baby crying inside. “Your nephew’s in there.” Smiling, she added, “He’s not very happy.”

The baby was on a scale, naked and wriggling, kicking his arms and legs toward the ceiling. He was tiny, wrinkly and pink-skinned. Still, Shane was floored by the knowledge that this red-faced, wailing bald thing was a piece of Rick. This was what Rick had made—his best friend and his brother—Rick was the reason for the angry little person squirming under a nurse’s gloved hands.

“Are you the father?” The nurse working the scale asked, she wrote a number down on her clipboard. “You can pick him up.” Talking to the baby now, she cooed softly. “Oh yes yes I know it’s cold. But daddy’s here now.”

“I’m not—” he started to tell her, but she’d already scooped the baby up and gotten a diaper on him and placed him, swaddled in a thin blue blanket, into Shane’s arms.

Shane had never held a baby before. He seemed so fragile, small enough for Shane to hold in his two hands. The baby was quieter now that he was off the table, feet digging into the meat of Shane’s forearm as he adjusted him, slid him like he’d always seen people hold infants, with the head settled above the crook of his arm. “Shhh,” he whispered, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. Holding the baby made him restless. He had no idea what to do. He’d assumed that the first time he held the baby Lori would be watching him like a hawk the whole while, yelling at him to remember to support the head, threatening to kill him if he dropped her kid. He hadn’t envisioned it this way, nothing but a nurse smiling at him, thinking Shane was even remotely responsible enough to have a baby of his own.

It was another twenty minutes before they finished up the tests, stuff like glucose levels and bilirubin. Scary sounding, but the nurse assured him that the baby seemed fine. She helped Shane dress the baby in a blue onesie and that was a challenge, maybe the hardest thing he’d ever done. Every time he had to get the arms and legs inside the clothing, he was afraid he’d snap the baby’s bones in two. Once the baby was wrapped up and ready, he took him out to see Rick.

Rick was sitting in a chair by the window again, face buried in his hands. He looked up, eyes wide and watery, when the baby made a noise. He didn’t get up; only let his arms open enough for Shane to put his son inside.

“He looks like you,” Shane said, sucking the inside of his cheek. “Minus the hair.”

Rick didn’t give the baby a second glance. He seemed barely aware he was holding him at all.

“Things were fine,” Rick started talking, but it wasn’t entirely to Shane. More like he was mulling things over, a play by play inside his head. “ _She_ was fine. They were hooking her up to the monitor, the fetal monitor, and, god, Shane, the _blood_. It was everywhere.”

“You heard the doctor.” He couldn’t keep from looking down at the baby now. His eyes were open and they were a deep, dark blue. “They’re just waiting for the medicine to work. Lori’s strong, Rick. She’ll pull through.”

The baby fell asleep and Rick didn’t pay that any mind either. Morning had come in now, real and even, and soon enough Rick and Lori’s families would be coming through. Shane hoped by then they’d have some news.

It was nine when the doctor returned. Shane knew immediately, instinctively, that Lori was gone. The doctor had that posturing to him, defeated, minutely slumped in grief, walking forward and dreading his job. Shane could sympathize. He and Rick had had to notify next of kin before and it always tore Rick to pieces. He took it personal, every time, felt that loss greater than he should.

Shane had to nudge Rick with his elbow because he couldn’t speak. It hurt, the grief did, the pain that wasn’t for him, or even Lori, but for the two left behind. The baby and Rick.

Rick snapped his head up, oblivious to the fact that his son was cuddled into him asleep.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, gray eyes flat and dark and hard like stone. “We couldn’t get her blood to clot.”

“No,” Rick moaned and Shane had to take the baby from him quick. Snatched the baby so fast he startled and began to cry and Shane didn’t know how to comfort either him or Rick. The sight choked Shane up in equal measure, throat tight and eyes burning, father and son both reduced to tears. “No no,” Rick kept saying, over and over again, curling in on himself in his chair.

The doctor watched the scene sadly and kept on explaining, talking to Shane about blood pressure and hemorrhaging, organ failure, all these chain reactions to one single thing.

Shane tried to remember the feeling he’d had that morning. That excitement was too far away for him to touch. It was like he’d never known that Shane, the one that thought this day held any promise, the man who had picked up those violet and yellow flowers that were slowly dying on the table and would, now, never get put into a vase. He’d imagined happiness, Rick and Lori proudly showing off a little baby, not Rick weeping and the baby crying for his mom.

Twice in as many hours, Shane had no idea what to do.


	2. Chapter 2

Shane spent that first night sleepless. It was hot out, dead thickness of summer, and the air was wet and still. Mosquitoes buzzed above him in the darkness. The bleating of cicadas filled his ears.

He couldn’t get his mind off Rick. He wondered how Rick was doing, if he’d settled any, if he was any closer than Shane was to sleep. He thought about the baby too: how small he had been, how he’d looked up straight at Shane, eyes wide and darkly blue. He wondered how the baby was doing without a mother to rock him in the night.

Shane had stuck around at the hospital long enough for Lori and Rick’s parents to get in. He’d had to be the one to explain everything, all the medical stuff about abruptions and clotting, but they’d known something was wrong from the start. Just the sight of the three of them in the waiting room—one of Shane’s arms around Rick’s shoulders, baby balanced in the other—told them everything they needed to know. Lori’s parents had dissolved immediately, Lori’s mom going down hard like Rick had, blonde hair falling limply in her face. They’d dropped the presents they were carrying on the floor. Bouquets of flowers fanned out and crushed underfoot. The balloons floated up to the ceiling. The teddy bear with “congratulations” stitched into the chest got kicked down the hall by people passing through until it disappeared.

Rick’s mom had taken the baby from him. She held him perfect, sturdy like a nurse. She was more useful than Shane could be, made tougher, with experience that had gotten her through the years. Meanwhile, Rick’s dad was hugging Rick tight to him, saying something in his ear. Rick was just blank faced like he couldn’t hear a word. Shane was at a loss then, no baby or Rick to hold onto, and it was hard get a grasp of all the things he was feeling when no one was looking to him for strength.

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Grimes said to Rick, rocking the baby who had started to cry.

Shane wasn’t sure who she had been talking to: Rick or Lori’s mom, crying, while Lori’s dad’s face was pinched and white.

Rick’s parents had always done their best to make him feel like family—a place at dinner, Mrs. Grimes sending Rick to school with an extra lunch—but he knew then that it was time for him to leave. This was a loss that wasn’t his. He was the only one out of them that had come away from the day unscathed. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand there trying to act like he was broken up the same.

-

He finally dozed off a little after sunrise, after watching the sunlight slant in through the open shades. He woke up in the afternoon. His mouth was sticky and heavy like he was dead. He decided he’d go see the baby and Rick. He didn’t know what else there was to do. The reality of Lori’s death had already hit him, he felt it everywhere, pressing on his mouth and nose and chest.

Shane stopped off at Rick’s house first. Rick’s real house, the one he and Lori had bought together a few months before Carl was born. The house was nice, two story, with a picket fence he’d put up himself. Rick hadn’t been good for much more than cutting the wood. He went to pick up things Rick might need: a bassinet, newborn diapers, bottles, nappies, and a few changes of clothes. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with the cradle he’d finished making. He’d been planning on slipping it in the nursery the night before Rick and Lori brought the baby home.

Lori lingered in the Grimes house like a ghost. He kept expecting to turn and find her watching him, leaning against the wall the way she had the last time he’d ever seen her, snapping at him to take his shoes off before he tracked dirt onto her freshly swept floor. It seemed like the house was waiting for her to come home and pick up where she’d left off. There was a pot of water on the stove ready for boiling. A load of laundry in the washer needed changing. Lori’s half of the bed probably still held her shape.

 He was relieved when he had the things together and walked back out the door. It was too sad being in there. The house reminded him of pictures of the ruins of Pompeii after they’d been dug out of the ashes—entire lives preserved in place.

Going back to Rick’s parents’ house was déjà vu. He’d spent a good thirteen years of his life walking up that path. Rick’s mom let him in, thin mouth pursed like she wanted to ask what had taken him so long, the same way she used to when he came for dinner late.

“He’s in his room,” she said, and in the back of the house he could hear the phone ringing like it was going to rattle itself off the hook. “With the baby,” Rick’s mom added, but Shane was already sprinting up the stairs.

Rick was lying on his bed on his belly, face turned toward the wall. His arms were useless noodles at his sides. The baby was asleep in his car seat on the floor.

“Hey,” Shane said gently as he set down everything he’d brought with him. He didn’t know what to offer Rick first. Rick hadn’t showered or shaven. He was in the same clothes as yesterday. He didn’t even register the hand Shane put on his shoulder or acknowledge Shane when he repeated himself and sat down on the edge of Rick’s bed. “How you holding up?”

Rick drew a breath and held it. His back shuddered under Shane’s palm as he blew it out.

“I stopped by your place.” He talked for the sake of talking, until he almost couldn’t recognize his own voice. He wanted to fill the silence left by Rick. It was something he’d done since childhood—gone on and on when Rick asked him questions. He tried to talk until he said what Rick wanted to hear.

He stopped because he couldn’t stand the sound of himself anymore. His teeth rattled with all the jokes that had fallen flat. Rick wasn’t ready for talking yet.

Shane slid off the end of the bed slowly. He sat with his back against the side of the mattress. He turned the car seat with his foot until he and the baby were face to face. The baby was the only one doing fine out of the lot of them. He was snoozing with his mouth open. Every so often his lips would tighten and his cheeks would hollow as he tried to suck on a nipple that wasn’t there. He sucked too hard at some point and startled himself awake.

Shane laughed as he lifted the baby out of his car seat. He looked pissed, eyes narrowed and face scrunched up tight. “Yeah, sometimes I’m disappointed when I wake up after dreaming about boobs too.” He cradled the baby in his arms like the nurse had shown him. It was easier the second time around.

The baby stared up at Shane in earnest. His eyes were huge and dark. Shane could almost see himself caught in them like light. He took his chance to really look the baby over. He’d held him the day before but this was different. He wasn’t trying to keep everybody calm. He brought a finger up to touch the baby’s cheek, feel the softness, and the skin was warm and thin, a little bumpy. The baby turned his head toward Shane’s finger and caught it in his open mouth. He latched on and started sucking, gums gnawing as they slicked his finger in spit.

“You hungry?” He’d never fed a baby before. He wasn’t even sure where to start. He had no idea how much formula he was supposed to add or how he was going to cook it. Hopefully Rick’s mom wouldn’t be too busy to help with that.

The baby didn’t seem to be hungry, though. He closed his eyes again and he sucked on Shane’s finger gentler, more for comfort than food. Shane dug around in his duffel bag for the pacifier he’d snagged off the changing table in the nursery. He popped his finger out of the baby’s mouth and quickly made the switch. “There we go, bud. Got your thing to suck on, got your bassinet to sleep in. You’re good to go.”

The mattress creaked as Rick rolled over. He still didn’t say a word.

Shane held one of the baby’s hands between his index finger and his thumb. “Little man, you got no idea what’s even going on around here, do you? Thank god for that.” The baby’s hand curled around his thumb and gripped it tight. “Not bad,” he said, wagging his thumb back and forth. “You got your dad’s handshake. You look a lot like him when he was your age too. His mom used to drag out his baby pictures when we were kids. Start praying that your head doesn’t get so big. Your dad used to look like a lollipop.”

On the bed, Rick huffed something that might have been a laugh.

The baby sucked loud on his pacifier. He turned his face into the crook of Shane’s arm. On every exhale Shane felt the warmth of his breath.

A strange heat started in Shane’s chest and spread. Emotions he couldn’t place pushed on him while he looked down at the baby and it hurt to breathe. He knew how it was to love people, to love Rick like his brother, to love his mom, but he’d never known anything close to this before. This swell in his throat and breast that he couldn’t swallow down.

He bent his head to give the baby a kiss. The action surprised him as much as the prickle of the baby’s peach fuzz hair against his lips. “You’re gonna be alright, little man.”

“Carl,” Rick croaked from above them. His voice was hoarse and wet. He looked ready to fall over even as he pushed himself up. He still wasn’t paying any attention to the baby or Shane. “Lori wanted to name him Carl.”

“Carl,” Shane repeated. He tested how the name felt on his tongue. “Carl Grimes. I like that. Better than, what was it? Horace? Whatever shit you had picked out.” He snuck a glance at Rick. Rick wasn’t any worse or better, just broken, his face shadowed and sharp as bone. “You wanna hold him?”

Rick shook his head no. “S’fine. You wanna grab a shower? Put on some of the clothes I brought for you?”

Showering was too much for Rick, but after Shane put Carl down he did change into a t-shirt and some sweats. He barely moved the entire time he did it, bending like he was stiff.

“They let me see her,” Rick said later when they were sitting on his bed. Their arms were touching. Rick’s body shifted as he breathed.

“The doctors?”

“Yeah. Once they cleaned her up.”

He could picture that pretty clearly. They’d seen bodies laid out on the coroner’s table before. Shane liked to think that with Lori they’d been neater. That they’d sewed her back together proper and kept her covered for Rick’s sake, so he wouldn’t worry about her being cold. He knew exactly what it had looked like—Lori lying on a metal table, gray and cool as stone.

Rick continued. “I sat with her for a while. I told her I was sorry, so she’d know.”

He put an arm around Rick then, and Rick sagged into the touch like a balloon that had deflated, air coming out in a rush. Shane remembered how, when they were children, Rick had always been the one prone to tears and reassuring hugs.

“She knows, man. But this…what happened…none of it’s you.”

Rick’s face crumpled. He started breathing fast and hard. Shane knew that he was about to cry and he wound his arm around Rick tighter.

“The last thing I said to her, Shane. I told her it was going to be okay. She was bleeding and she  _knew_  and I couldn’t let myself see it. She wanted to say goodbye and I said that she’d be fine,” Rick’s voice cracked on the last word. The tears started in an instant and Rick wept into his open hand, palm over his face like he could smooth the sobs away if he tried.

“Shhh,” Shane said, exactly as he had when they were little boys. “You weren’t lying, Rick. Things are gonna be okay. Man I promise. Everything is gonna turn out fine.”

There was nothing left in Rick for talking after that. And there was nothing for Shane to do but sit with him, arm around Rick’s shoulders, tore to pieces while he listened to his best friend cry. Carl slept through all of it. Rick’s weeping and the silence that followed, the tiny tremors that ran through Rick and rocked the bed.

Shane got up to grab Rick a tissue off the dresser. Rick was set up in his old childhood bedroom that his parents had kept more or less the same. Their little league trophies were still sitting up on the dresser. Rick’s high school diploma was framed and hung on the wall. There were a few photos of him and Rick when they were children, but the majority of the room was dedicated to Lori. There were pictures of her everywhere: Rick and Lori on prom night, Rick beaming as he slipped a white, wide petaled corsage onto Lori’s wrist. There were others: trips to the beach, Rick and Lori at the river, one of the three of them the summer before their freshman year of college with Rick and Lori sitting in the back of Rick’s pickup, Shane sandwiched in-between.

He didn’t know how Rick could stand to be here in a room full of reminders of back when things were good.


End file.
